The end of the world comes and goes every year and fortunately, the human race is still here, alive and well. However, this doesn’t seem to stop conspiracy theorists from searching and even finding analogies with past events and writings in the Bible which could prove the end is near. It is almost a trend to claim that the world will end when you say it will. It’s like there’s a huge cake waiting for you on the other side because you guessed it right. Still, the most recent wild claim talks of the mysterious planet called Nibiru which will apparently crash into Earth in September.

The end is near…again

Everybody knows (or should know) that on August 21, a solar eclipse will take place after 99 years. The people living on the North American continent will be able to watch and enjoy this spectacular event. However, here to ruin everybody’s fun is author David Meade, who wrote Planet X: The 2017 Arrival. According to his theory, this solar eclipse will only act as an “introduction” to the apocalypse. He is also stating that Nibiru, or Planet X, will crash into our planet on September 23, this year. There is only one problem with his theory. Apparently, Nibiru doesn’t exist. At least this is what scientists are saying.

But Meade, in his desperate attempts to convince the world that he is right, has apparently found some interesting Bible fragments which supposedly support his theory. It’s also worth mentioning that Meade has previously said that the planet will crash into Earth in October. He probably thought that it would have ruined his winter holidays, so he changed the date. Still, his claims might have sounded a bit more serious had he supported them with actual facts. Meade doesn’t rely on anything else but Bible passages which are already highly ambiguous.

It’s in the Bible

According to him, there is a passage in the Old Testament which talks about a great eclipse. More precisely, in the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 13. He also talks about the number 33 which he says is symbolic for the end of the world. It all has to do with this number. The eclipse will start in Oregon, the state with the number 33, and it will be the first in 99 years. Again, 33 three times. Meade says we should be afraid, very afraid. However, as long as scientists are not saying anything about a danger coming to Earth, everyone should stay calm.

It all began when a team of experts from Sydney, Australia began the search for the specific genes which cause heart defects in newborn children. Sally Dunwoodie, the leader of this team began analyzing various genes which may have a high influence on the development of the heart in babies. Their research actually began a few years ago, when they started linking some genes to those families which were welcoming babies born with heart defects. Back in 2005, the team confronted the most severe case. A baby had problems in the backbone, ribs and heart. The lungs of the baby could not function properly because of the ribs issues. After many studies, the experts reached the conclusion that both parents had a mutation which affected their baby. Now, a recent study is suggesting that a higher dose of Vitamin B3 might be the key in preventing heart issues in babies.

A possible salvation in Vitamin B3

Many doctors have said that by increasing the intake of Vitamin B3 in pregnant women could help prevent certain birth defects. The idea is that this vitamin can make up for the lack of a certain molecule in the body, called NAD. This molecule is part of a healthy development when it comes to newborns. Dunwoodie said that the 2005 case baffled the entire team because there was simply no explanation for that baby’s severe birth defects. This until 2012, when they encountered a fairly similar case. Then, they found other two families with the same mutation and everything became clear. They had found the gene that was responsible.

The team tested its theory on mice and removed the two genes in order to see whether the babies would be born with defects. The surprise was huge when the pups were perfectly healthy. However, after a while, they identified the cause. The mice food was rich in two specific substances which together form what we know as Vitamin B3. They replaced the missing genes and helped develop healthy little mice.

Preventing birth defects

While this is a huge discovery, scientists are saying that more research and tests are needed. Moreover, the team of experts admits that they still don’t know the exact role of the NAD molecule. Also, how it affects development. Still, it’s nothing wrong to consume this vitamin as it has many other benefits.

The way video games influence our brain has been a long-debated subject. Some have said that games have a bad influence especially on children’s brains. Others think it helps them develop a strong sense of orientation and the ability to solve complex problems. Now, a new study suggests that certain video game genres might influence the brain’s hippocampal system. Also, the way a person navigates can also have an impact on our brains. It’s worth noting that this particular region of the brain deals with memory, spatial orientation and learning. It’s very important when it comes to the cognitive processes in our brains.

How certain games affect our brains

If the hippocampus become empty, that person has a very high risk of developing brain illnesses like depression, Alzheimer’s and even schizophrenia. The study says that there is a category of players whose brains might be even more affected by those games. According to the experts, those who use response strategies instead of spatial memory ones to orientate inside a video game map will suffer even more damage. Usually, first-person shooter games are the one which require a high capacity when it comes to navigation and decision-making abilities. The journal Molecular Psychiatry published the results of this recent study in video games.

In order to reach these conclusions, the team of researchers studied the grey matter inside 33 people’s brains. After that, they analyzed the differences between the hippocampal systems which belonged to two categories of people: those who regularly play games and those who don’t play at all. The team also asked the participants to answer some questions regarding what strategies they use when they need to navigate inside a game’s environment. According to the study, there are some interesting differences between response learners and spatial learners.

A big difference between two categories of players

When asked to solve a maze puzzle, the first category used certain patterns in order to remember the steps they needed to complete. On the other hand, spatial learners had a better orientation capacity. Also, they established a clear connection between the targets and other objects in that maze. It’s interesting that those people who regularly play video games actually employed response strategies more frequently. The experts’ conclusion was that playing first-person shooters drastically reduces the grey matter in the hippocampus.

Fans of HBO’s TV show Game of Thrones should know that a certain dwarf skilled with words made a big part of the story’s dynamics. Tyrion Lannister came a long way since the first season when he was just the brother of Cersei and Jamie Lannister. He has always been one of the brightest players in the Game of Thrones. Until recently, he was very cunning, had a way with words and was able to get himself out of almost any situation. However, in those recent episodes, something changed in Tyrion Lannister. He has been failing at advising Daenerys Targaryen as her Hand and his plans have proven to be a big mess. The Mother of Dragons lost almost all of her allies because of his ideas and she even told Tyrion this. Now, the question is, what happened?

The cunning nature of Tyrion Lannister

Tyrion is now the Hand of the Queen and he should have profited greatly from this privilege. Now is the time to take revenge on his siblings. Also, to help the land of Westeros have a better ruler. Instead, he delivers only failures and even Daenerys is a little sick of his clever ideas. It’s important to remember that over the course of the seven seasons, Tyrion avoided being thrown out of the Moon Door, something that not many accomplish.

The fall of the dwarf

Also, he changed the minds of the members of Vale’s tribes and actually made them protect him. As for his late father, he killed him during a very vulnerable moment after he appointed him Hand of the King in King’s Landing. During the Battle at Blackwater Bay, he played the most important role. Finally, he managed to become the most trusted advisor of Daenerys Targaryen after being treated as a slave.

That was one of the last moments of glory for the Lannister dwarf. Euron Greyjoy destroyed the Ironborn and the Dornish fleets. They were supposed to take King’s Landing after he convinced Dany to send them there. Then, he decided to send the Unsullied army to Casterly Rock while Jamie occupied Highgarden and killed another ally. All in all, it seems like Tyrion Lannister might only be good at using his tongue, not at taking crucial decisions. He may be a clever player, but he may not be an extremely intelligent strategist. The future episodes will probably clarify his fate. Also, they will decide where he’s standing, now that he delivered a lot of failures.

Instagram has become a very important part of our everyday lives. Not only do we post selfies or pictures of ourselves, but we also let our followers know what we ate, where we went and how much fun we had. However, a recent study revealed that our Instagram photos might reveal a lot more than we previously thought. For example, the state of our mental health. According to the experts who conducted the study, they started by analyzing the Instagram profiles of about 166 people. Those consisted of over 43,000 pictures displaying various moments of their lives.

Instagram is a way into our minds

After examining the photos, the researchers asked the participants some questions regarding the history of their mental health. Over the past three years, about a half of those people received a depression diagnosis. This prompted the team of experts to further analyze the many elements that appeared on those people’s Instagram posts. Also, they paid attention to the number of likes and comments each photo received. They came to a striking conclusion. According to the results, the people with depression typically posted darker and bluer images, without many people in them. Sometimes, not even themselves.

Another interesting habit of those depressive people was that they didn’t usually use a filter on their images. And when they finally did it, they chose the one which turned the picture black and white. On the other hand, people who didn’t suffer from depression favored the “Valencia” filter. This makes the photos warmer and offers a happy vibe to them. With all this information, the experts managed to create an algorithm which allowed them to discover the depression in some people in about 70% of the cases. Moreover, the same algorithm even noticed the signs of depression long before people received a diagnosis.

Helping with mental problems

Chris Danforth, the author of this study, is saying that the program could help greatly in discovering the early signs of depression of mental health issues in patients. Doctors could benefit greatly from it, as well as people. Depression reportedly affects about 300 million people in the entire world. Sometimes, cases that are ignored or left untreated come to a bitter conclusion. Many people commit suicide or harm themselves because of this issue.

Let’s face it. Almost everyone had at one point a giant pimple on a very visible part of their body. The quickest solution to that problem? To pop it. While it’s true that most of the times that area only becomes swollen and even more visible than the initial pimple, we still do it. And those recent and rather gruesome videos which show people getting rid of their blackheads and pimples have only accentuated this trend. In theory, this action is very repulsive and shouldn’t be done at all, let alone in public. However, recently, it has become some sort of a relaxation method. Still, the case of a woman called Katie Wright might convince a lot of people that popping your zits is bad. Very bad.

A pimple turned out to be an infection

According to a lengthy post she decided to share with everyone on Twitter, Wright, as everybody else, had a pimple that was beginning to hurt. As the pain under her skin increased, she decided that it was time to kill the intruder. So, she began popping it. The problem was that the she didn’t solve anything, on the contrary. Katie admitted that about an hour after she ended the process of removing the pimple, her entire face began swelling up. Moreover, the pain became very noticeable and she felt like something was crawling under her skin. A horrifying sensation indeed. She immediately panicked and went to the emergency room.

The woman was shocked when the doctors there told her that her pimple wasn’t at all a pimple. Instead, it was a special Staph infection, called Cellulitis. This reportedly affects the cellular tissues, unlike Staph, which has a head. The doctors warned Katie that she had a very big risk of the infection spreading to her brain or eyes. The final result would have been blindness. The doctors said that she probably got infected after using a dirty pencil brush for her eyebrows.

A serious situation

According to dermatologist Sandra Lee (also nicknamed doctor Pimple Popper), the area between our eyes is very dangerous when it comes to pimples. An infection can spread from that area directly to the sinus and therefore lead to sinus thrombosis, stroke and even death. So, people should be really careful if they have a zit in that area. It’s best to leave it alone and clean the area with a special cleansing product.

The list of people who have swallowed rather dubious objects is very large and it gets updated regularly. Over the years, doctors have struggled to remove foreign objects from people’s stomachs and things like bobby pins, toothbrushes and even cellphones have become part of everyday life. The case of a 30-year old woman from Australia will surely make this comprehensive list too. She arrived at a hospital suffering from severe abdominal pains which came out of nowhere. According to a medical report from Monday, the woman had a quicker heart rate and an inflamed abdominal wall membrane. However, everything else seemed to be perfectly normal.

A brace wire

While all her tests came out normal, doctors started looking for other causes for this severe pain she was experiencing. She hadn’t had surgery in recent years. So, they also eliminated the theory according to which a doctor had left something inside her after the surgery. They solved the mystery after a CT scan unveiled a metal wire in the lady’s stomach. More precisely, the metallic object was stuck inside her intestines and was causing that horrible pain. Moreover, it had been there for about ten years.

According to what the doctors revealed, that wire came from a dental brace. A few years ago, she used to wear the braces and she probably accidentally swallowed this metallic part. The doctors also explained that the foreign object caused a condition called volvulus. This caused her intestines to twist around each other and triggered unbearable abdominal pains. It’s also interesting that the 30-year old woman admitted wearing braces about a decade ago, but she doesn’t remember ever swallowing them. She also reportedly didn’t lose parts of it over that period of time. According to one of her doctors, the case is unusual because people don’t normally ingest something like that. Also, parts of braces don’t usually break off.

Not the only such case

Actually, the list of cases in which people have swallowed bizarre objects is very long. There’s even a comprehensive list which details the weirdest such cases. Over the years, people have swallowed lighters, pens, and even SpongeBob pendants. Recently, in May, another case made headlines. A little girl from Texas had swallowed a fidget spinner, a very popular toy.

Recently, there have been some fairly bizarre reports that a copper mug could give those who drink from it food poisoning. Well, it seems like people should not be afraid of their mugs or throw them away after all. Those reports are not as serious as they sound. If you like to drink the popular cocktail called Moscow Mule from a copper mug, chances are you will not end up in a hospital with food poisoning. Those recent reports have frightened a lot of people, especially because they underline the fact that any alcoholic beverage will cause this unwanted effect on those who drink from such a mug.

A copper mug will not give you food poisoning

There have been many discussions concerning those copper mugs over the last weeks. This craze actually began when the Alcoholic Beverages Division from the state of Iowa released a warning. That warning told people to be careful and to not drink any beverage with a pH under 6.0 from a copper mug. This warning also concerned foods which may come into contact with copper. Some of those ingredients that have an under 6.0 pH are vinegar, wine, fruit juice, and the ingredients from the cocktail Moscow Mule (vodka, ginger beer, lime juice).

This cocktail indeed has a pH of under 6.0. It’s also true that if someone drinks such a beverage from a copper recipient they might end up in a hospital. However, every person owning a copper mug should look inside for some kind of lining. It’s worth noting that most manufacturers are aware of this and the majority of the mugs have this protective lining. However, according to the Department of Inspections and Appeals from Iowa, the idea they wanted to underline with that warning was a bit different.

You won’t die, but you should be careful

According to a spokesman, that warning they issued didn’t have the aim to scare people. Also, it didn’t forbid them to drink Moscow Mule from a copper recipient. Instead, the main idea was to make restaurants and bars pay more attention to this seemingly little detail. On the other hand, swallowing copper can lead to serious problems. For example, vomiting and diarrhea which can trigger severe dehydration and even death. Still, people should not be scared. Most modern mugs are completely safe to drink out of.

A new research done by the American Cancer Society has revealed that more and more younger adults in the United States are sadly dying from colon and rectal cancers. This is a very big problem as people of 50-years old are already passing away at an age when they should just begin undergoing screening for this problem. According to doctor James Church from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, doctors don’t usually recommend screenings for people who are under 50-years old. This is part of the reason why the cancer has enough time to evolve inside a young adult. When they finally discover it, it’s already too late.

Colon and rectal cancers kill people

Church did not take part in this recent study, but he said that he too has seen this trend in some of his patients. He remembered that last year, he had two separate 36-year old patients who didn’t knew each other. They both suffered from stage IV colon cancer and because they failed to discover it earlier in their lives, they died after it affected their livers. This is why the doctor admitted that such cases strongly affect him and other doctors too. This disease is killing more and more people and it’s especially difficult to handle when it’s already at an advanced stage.

The journal JAMA published this new study on Tuesday. It’s interesting that this new one follows a previous research on the rising rates of colon and rectal cancers in the United States. This earlier study revealed that people born in 1990 have a much higher risk of developing both rectal and colon cancer in comparison with those born in 1950. However, it’s still unknown why this difference exists and what has caused it. The lead author of the recent study is saying that people are undergoing more colonoscopies which should mean that they discover the cancers earlier. But this is not the case. The new study suggests that more people are undergoing this procedure because the cancers have a much higher incidence.

Race makes a difference

It’s extremely interesting that the study discovered a decrease in incidence over the 45-year study period in black people. What causes this difference remains a mystery. Doctors are saying that this shouldn’t happen as white people and black people are the same when it comes to colon and rectal cancer risk.

Most people know Greenland as that icy region, full of snow and interesting creatures. A place where is always chilly and where people sick of high temperatures and climate change could go and enjoy a vacation. However, according to NASA, a huge wildfire might push them to want to discover more about this mysterious region. Since last month, a very big and dangerous fire has been affecting a large area in the west of Greenland. Even the ESA, which is the space agency’s counterpart in Europe, has shared a shocking image in a Twitter post. The image is a satellite one and people can indeed see the huge fire in that area.

An unusual wildfire

A team at NASA is saying that the wildfire began spreading about 90 miles near Sisimiut. This is a rather small town located on the western coast of Greenland and has about 5,500 people living there. According to certain reports which the Climate Central publication obtained, the wildfire NASA is talking about is actually a group of many blazes burning together and around the same area. The biggest of those blazes measures around 3,000 acres. According to some researchers from the Delft University of Technology in Netherlands, there is a series of very interesting moving images which they managed to gather. One of them decided to post those on Twitter for everyone to see what is going on in Greenland right now. Those images are all from space and are truly impressive.

Also, according to what other experts are saying, those are most probably peatland fires. They came to this conclusion because that region of Greenland is mostly covered in a blanket of small grass, shrub and rocks. This revelation is not at all surprising. Previous studies have stated that climate change and its effects have a high impact on peat.

Climate change is to blame

Therefore, the fact that such a large quantity of carbon has been accumulating in there for thousands of years made this area burst into flames. And it’s all because of the growing temperatures, a striking effect of climate change. While there have been fires in Greenland over the years, this one is still rather bizarre. At the moment, scientists are struggling to find the cause of this fire and how long it will last.